Why Steve Jobs Could Be A Savior For Media Companies

Arnon Mishkin is a partner with Mitchell Madison Group, where he consults for media companies on improving legacy businesses as well as making the internet profitable. Prior to MMG, he was a partner at the Boston Consulting Group, where he did some of the firm

As an extension to Mr. Mishkin's comments about 1010WINS' middle button promotion, I remember creating special stickers that would be applied to the preset with our station's call letters. Very much like the icon on the iPhone desktop promoting the media outlet's app. Simple and effective.

Balmer's comment shows a certain amount of disingenuousness. He is really referring to the browser-accessed world wide web. The iPhone (and other mobile devices like Android and Blackberry) are supporting apps that use the internet without the restrictions of a browser. They are redefining people's interface to the internet.

The future of the internet lies in applications that reside on devices like mobile devices, PCs and so on and use the internet as a delivery mechanism for content that doesn't need to be stored on the device. The browser isn't dead, but it is too generalized to provide the kind of user experience that a custom app can. Examples of this on PCs are the scores of Twitter apps that enhance the experience of accessing the real-time feed using the Twitter API.

You make a good point. Many content owners are using mobile apps as a way of charging something for the content they provide for free on the web. But don't you think this will be a short lived opportunity?

As mobile broadband improves, won't mobile devices simply become new ways of accessing the same web and content that we access on computers today? Won't we use the content search and aggregation tools that we use now? Do you think that people will be happy paying for content via an app, which they can access for free via their mobile browser?

I think any media company that is relying on mobile devices as being their road to riches is putting all of their eggs in one very fragile basket.

All good — I love the "middle button" example — but why does one has to create limits and narrow users' choices in the process? There are other ways to retain users or at least to monetize content — because content monetization is what we should be talking about, not visit or traffic monetization.

Search engines helped create (and Soc Nets populate) an enormous worldwide maze, through which one can navigate only with their "ad-supported" guidance. The bigger and murkier the maze, the better. In this model, the quality, reliability or currency of the content almost does not matter. One might say "CPM non olet;" if a silly cat video generates more CPM than a smart piece by A. Mishkin does or ever will, so be it; if one half of the CPM comes from impossible-to-catch-and-close floating ads, misleading tags or phony, phishing or copy-cat sites, so be it. SE and Soc Nets will make their money anyway — huge money; however, not as huge as possible. (The handful of really successful Internet companies seem to have forgotten that the role of a business is not only to make money, but also to maximize profits.)

If Apple chooses the same way of manipulating the organic web traffic, bending it to its own "middle button," rather than promoting users’ free choice and quality content that is delivered directly to the users in a quick, simple, safe, and fair (which is not the same as "free") way, without any "application and download optimization" gimmicks, then its tablet will be just another expensive gadget, preying for its piece of the traffic in the maze and loosing the opportunity to make a lot more money in the long run.

There are other ways to make ideas like the tablet work well and save the content creators and publishers too.

One thing is for sure this Mishkin guy is as out of touch as Ballmer is and as are most consultants. Apple just furthers the broken DRM process on brilliantly designed hardware and an interface that makes it idiot proof to use and to addictive to get away from if you you fall prey.

But Jobs as a Savior? Puhlease! He is the King money grubbing demon amongst a pantheon of epic devils trying to ream consumers! You may get the oblivious young and general morons out in the world to buy into a walled garden, but go ahead and try to make anyone with intelligence adopt your ludicrous system and see where that gets you.

Content providers have only themselves to blame. You didnt do right by us when you had us by the short hairs and now that we can flip you the middle finger, you find that you dont like what comes back around.